


The Rise of the Morningstar

by Silent_So_Long



Category: Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: Gen, Halloween
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-09
Updated: 2011-10-09
Packaged: 2017-10-24 10:47:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/262624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silent_So_Long/pseuds/Silent_So_Long
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam is missing on All Hallows Eve, and it’s up to Bumblebee to find him.  Written for the Halloween challenge 2011, as held by <a href="http://transficsation.livejournal.com">transficsation</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rise of the Morningstar

**Author's Note:**

> Content/Warnings: Combat violence no worse than is on display in the movies, vague hand-wavey mentions of religious theology as pertaining to Lucifer, sustained threat and creepiness, vague and skewed use of a ritual, potential blasphemy in regards to location (a ruined church),

The night’s dark realms enveloped Bumblebee as he idled alone at the side of the road, houses crowding round his metallic frame. His sensory scans had already checked the environs of the Witwicky household for signs of Sam, the young life the kindly Autobot had sworn to protect. Sam was his friend, and had helped Bumblebee, Optimus Prime and their team of Autobots win many battles against the threat of encroaching Decepticons.

It was at Optimus’ behest that Bumblebee check on Sam that night, to make sure that the boy’s safety continued unabated. After all, in light of all that had happened in their shared past, Sam Witwicky was a precious commodity in the scheme of things and his fate lay closely intertwined with that of the Autobots.

He waited, yet Sam never came out, and when Bumblebee checked the household again, it was to find that the young man had been gone for a while. Even though sometimes Sam was busy with chores inside, judging by the coolness of the boy’s sheets, and the stillness of the air in Sam’s room, the human was long gone.

A frisson of unease whiffled through Bumblebee’s expansive consciousness. Sam had no other form of transportation anymore, and he knew the human preferred his company over the prospect if using a more mundane human car. The Autobot knew that something was very wrong indeed. Quietly he changed from his vehicle guise into his Autobot one and furthered his scans, all to no avail. Sam was nowhere in the neighbourhood.

Bumblebee turned away, sensory arrays turned to the maximum as he attempted to find the young boy, to locate him and make sure that he was alright. A sound caught the brave Autobot’s keen olfactory sensors and his head swivelled this way and that, triangulating the source of the screams, screams that he recognised as coming from one Sam Witwicky ...

~*~*~*~*~

Sam groaned, eyes cracking open to darkened recesses surrounding him, dust drifting through the air, largely unseen yet felt all the same. Guttering light shifted against the wall, dim moonlight that revealed nothing but a silver-limned glow permeating the air. Despite the limitations of his vision, Sam still got the sense that he was in some kind of ancient building, a place he soon ascertained was a church. In the shifting light, he saw vaulted ceilings, pews, and the unmistakable shape of a crucifix looming over him. The cold stone of an altar pressed against his back.

Sam shifted and found that he could not move, his wrists and ankles bound by heavy shackles weighting his limbs down so harshly, he would be surprised if he walked away without any bruises at all. He tried not to think of the immediate thought that assailed him - if he even walked away at all ...

He rattled his shackles, deciding that he must have a fighting chance at survival. It wasn’t as if he’d gone up against Decepticons in the past and failed, or he wouldn’t even still be alive now. He didn’t want to go through that, go up against mechanised life form related odds and die now.

“Hey,” he shouted angrily into the tomb-dark silence, hoping for an answer yet dreading it all the same.

Whoever had trapped him here could not have done so for friendly means, Sam wagered. The only reason why someone would shackle a person up was if they had something particularly nefarious in mind for that person, at least in Sam’s experience.

“Hey,” he shouted again, a little quieter now, deciding that he needed to do something, yet still not wanting to draw undue attention to himself.

A sudden blast of rancid air burst over him, rank and cloyingly sweet punching its way into his lungs. Sam turned away, face screwed tight into an expression of disgust. He tried not to breathe too deeply, yet found it hard to take shallow breaths, when his lungs felt starved of oxygen.

A cold, wet hand suddenly snaked across Sam’s cheek, leaving a slimy trail sticking against his skin. Sam tried to shuffle away, gagging slightly against the feel and the heavy stench surrounding him. His breathing, previously shallow, now came harsh and fast, wheezing gulps of air as the rancid touch moved lower. He tried to remind himself of all that he’d done, the Decepticons he’d fought, the wars he’d participated in, all in the attempt not to scream.

Eventually, as the grasping hand moved lower, Sam had no choice but to relent. He screamed, long and loud yelling for Bumblebee, yelling for help that even he doubted would ever come. A smooth hand, cold and clammy against Sam’s flesh crept across the young man’s mouth, trapping Sam’s yells behind cool skin. Sam attempted to bite the hand, instincts taking over with the need to do something, anything, to cause harm to his captor, in the absence of being able to free himself. He failed on that score, temporarily stunned by the force of a sudden blow to the side of his head, a blow that he had not seen coming. He lay there, staring as sunbursts of lights crowded across his vision.

“Stupid child,” a voice hissed from nearby, sibilant and strangely snakelike. “Do you really think that you can go up against one such as I and win? Fools, the lot of you. I shall never understand why my Father placed you before us.”

Sam blinked, attempting to rid his vision of the bursts of light across his eyes, before he twisted and turned his head, trying to trap the other being’s form in his view. Once he’d determined a shape, he focussed, and almost wished he hadn’t. The thing with him was indescribably ugly, body twisted with mangled wings and a lashing tail, skin mottled and half sloughed off as though the beast had suffered great agonising pain in his past. The being’s face was sharp, almost cat-like in its feral ferocity, sharp teeth glinting in the light as it grinned at him.

“I used to be quite beautiful, you know, quite unlike this horrid, twisted creature you see before you, today,” the thing hissed.

“Who the hell are you?” Sam asked, disgust temporarily overriding his nascent fear.

“Quite appropriate turn of phrase you have there, child,” the being replied, leering at Sam. “You may call me Lucifer.”

“Luci - Lucifer?” Sam stuttered. “As in the devil?”

“More like fallen angel,” Lucifer corrected, although without rancour. “You see, I was once God’s favourite, yet now I am forever doomed to be one of the outcast.”

Lucifer circled the altar where Sam was strapped, feet clanking horribly against the concrete floor. Although Sam couldn’t see, he wagered that Lucifer’s feet were, indeed, cloven, judging by the sounds they made against the floor. He moaned, closing his eyes momentarily and wondered just how he was supposed to get out of this one alive. He’d faced all manner of evil Decepticons, yet it looked as though he was about to be killed by the very devil himself, no matter what Lucifer himself said to the contrary.

“I am the true Fallen, not the Fallen one you met before,” Lucifer said. “That one was an impostor. He fashioned himself after me, after all.”

Sam kept silent for a time, deeming Lucifer’s soliloquy unworthy of a response. Finally, he asked a question.

“What do you want from me?” he asked, not liking the fact that his throat was dry, his voice cracking with thirst as much as from fear.

“You? You are a hero, are you not?” Lucifer asked, whipping around to face Sam, tail whistling through the air, as his wings crinkled still further with the abrupt movement.

“I have been called that, yeah,” Sam replied, reluctantly. “Although the one who named me as hero, was far more heroic than I. His name is Optimus Prime and you have no reason to speak his name.”

“Maybe, maybe not. It won’t make much difference to you, soon enough,” Lucifer said, coldly, with a diffident shrug.

“What are you going to do to me?” Sam asked, not sure that he really wanted to know.

“I am going to kill you, my child. You are my offering, my sacrifice on this most hallowed of eves. After all, don’t you humans call this All Hallow’s Eve? When the veil between your world and the spirit world is the thinnest?” Lucifer asked.

“I guess,” Sam replied, uncertainly.

“And so it is that the veil between Hell and Heaven is also thin. If I can sacrifice the pure soul of a hero - which would be you - then I will be able to ascend with the power of said soul and regain my place in Heaven, where I have longed to be for so long,” Lucifer said, smiling his awful feral smile at no one and nothing.

He didn’t even seem to be looking at Sam anymore, treating him as though he was something worse than an insect. Perhaps, to Lucifer, he was, Sam thought and that realization didn’t make him feel any better. He rested his head against the cold stone beneath him, wondering just how he was expected to escape. His bonds were too tight and Lucifer too close to even make the attempt. For one brief moment, Sam wondered if he would ever get to see his parents again, or Carly, Bumblebee, Optimus and all the rest of his Autobot friends.

In the distance, on the edges of his immediate consciousness, he was dimly aware of Lucifer still talking, detailing all the ways that he was going to kill Sam, slitting him open on the sacrificial altar, blood flowing to free the soul encased in Sam’s slender body. Sam was barely listening, not caring much for the details of his own death; instead, he was hoping that his exit from this world would be a swift one.

A sudden noise nearby alerted Lucifer and Sam both, before Bumblebee tumbled in, guns blazing, arms outstretched as he screeched into the building, breaking down the far wall into a cloud of blasted rubble. Lucifer winked away in a flit of light, wings whirring as he popped and frzzled around the darkened interior. Sam couldn’t help but think of the X Men movies he’d delighted in watching, of Nightcrawler and Azazel and their teleportation skills. He never imagined that those skills were actually real, more like a figment of Marvel Comic’s and Hollywood’s combined expansive imaginations. Then again, he doubted that even Hollywood imagined the devil was real.

Bumblebee did not have time to check if Sam was alright; instead, he was kept busy with trying to aim at the being that had threatened his friend. He trampled and rolled across the limited floor space, guns blazing at the ever evasive Lucifer. Lucifer seemed everywhere and nowhere at once, landing on the Autobot’s head momentarily before flitting away laughing hysterically. The next moment he would be at Bumblebee’s feet, taunting him before whisking away again.

Finally, Bumblebee lay still, pretending to feign weariness, a state that it was impossible for him to feel. He was not human, he was not built to tire. Instead, he waited until Lucifer landed upon his chest, feral grin leering close against the brightness of Bumblebee’s eyes. Lucifer opened his mouth as though to speak, yet the fallen angel never received the chance. Bumblebee’s huge fist arced round, grabbing the Morningstar around the neck, gripping him tight before blowing his head off with one bright yellow burst of light. Lucifer’s body crumbled, showering the prone form of Bumblebee in a fine layer of dust.

“Bee,” Sam yelled, arching his neck as far as he could to see his friend.

Bumblebee stood and walked towards Sam, large hands gentle as he snapped the young man’s bonds. He helped Sam up, kneeling before him and staring soundlessly at the human. Even though Bumblebee usually communicated with his friend via his car stereo, this time he chose silence instead.

Sam attempted a smile at Bumblebee, touched by the gentle Autobot’s silent, yet very obvious, concern.

“I’m fine,” he told him, angling his arms and body towards the staring Bumblebee. “See? I’m fine.”

Bumblebee nodded, before a sudden burst of static crackled through the weighted air.

“I’m so glad you’re alive,” came a recording from some indeterminate film that Sam didn’t recognise.

“Me too, Bee,” Sam replied, quietly. “Thanks. Yet again.”

“All in a day’s work, son,” crackled another sound bite across the airwaves, as Bumblebee tapped Sam lightly on the shoulder with one finger.

Sam laid one hand upon the Autobot’s metallic one and smiled up at his friend. Silence reigned then; no words could be spoken nor were needed. Finally, Sam did speak.

“Let’s go home, Bee. I’ve had enough of Halloween to last me a lifetime,” he said, still grinning.

Bumblebee nodded, before a series of mechanical whirrs and whines split the air. Where once a proud and noble Autobot knelt, now idled a bright yellow and black Camaro, waiting for Sam to step inside. Sam cast one glance around the empty church, before sliding into the passenger seat. Bumblebee idled his way through the hole he’d smashed in the wall, before taking Sam back to where he belonged.

Home.

~~ the end ~~


End file.
